Swabeck Meetings in St. Louis and Stanton

(December 1931)

ST. LOUIS – On Tuesday, December 15, comrade Arne Swabeck spoke in Staunton to an interested audience of 40 miners on the subject of Unemployment, the 6 hour day and the Communists. The miners listened attentively to comrade Swabeck’s explanation of the causes of the present and past crises, the impossibility of a solution under capitalism and the need for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and for a militant working class and Communist Party toward this end. The immediate demands of the six hour day, unemployment insurance, long-term credits to the. Soviet Union, etc., were discussed in relation to the ultimate goal.

Questions and discussion took place, and the Stalinists who took the floor were repudiated for their slanders by a miner who said that the workers resented the official party’s “splitting tactics”.

In St. Louis

The St. Louis meeting on the same subject was even more successful. The audience of workers, party members and sympathizers numbered about 150. The attempts of the Stalinists were even feebler than in Staunton. By their clumsy attacks on the Left Opposition, they were placed in the ridiculous position which discredited them. Comrade Swabeck spoke for Communism, the American C.P., the Comintern and the Soviet Union and the platform of the Communist League of America (Left Opposition). When the Stalinists attacked what comrade Swabeck said with slander against comrade Trotsky, the workers placed them in the same category with a “scissor-bill” who openly and vehemently defended capitalism. These incidents enabled comrade Swabeck to make even clearer to the workers and party members and sympathizers present the position of the Left Opposition toward the Party.

A large batch of the Militant and literature were sold. A number of party members have taken the first correct step by beginning to study the issues in dispute between Stalinism and the Left Opposition. We will continue our work to win the Party members to the platform of the Left Opposition and for the unity of the Communist vanguard.